


A Gift

by TimelessTragedy



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-08-20 03:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8233876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimelessTragedy/pseuds/TimelessTragedy
Summary: He was given a gift much too young in life, one that weighs on his soul heavily. But it's the one thing that's never betrayed him.





	1. A Gift

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an English project, though I tried to stay as close to cannon as possible.  
> Big thank you to kenwave for editing it  
> Any mistakes are my own.

He’s twelve years old when he starts trying to escape. It’s not enough, and for a long time he’s trapped without a hope. He feels bruised.

 

At thirteen, _they_ come into town. Everyone knows them; they’re the terrors, the ones that carry guns and threats and fear. The town falls into their hands almost overnight, and no one argues.

 

At fourteen, he’s had enough. The wounds he carries eat at him, driving him to _them_. They look at him, pity in their eyes, their lips pulling into harsh sneers, their words dripping with acid.

 

_Prove yourself_ , they demand. _Prove you’re worth it._

 

They send him back with a gift that weighs on his soul.

 

At fifteen, the metal’s heavy and cold but familiar, and it doesn’t hurt him to pick it up anymore. He can still hear the screaming that’s shaking the floor beneath him, the cries of hurt feelings and broken promises and the slap of flesh on flesh.

 

He takes the stairs one at a time, slow and steady, the metal whispering promises.

 

The two that bicker look up as one, faces transformed by rage and anguish that shift into horror as he lifts it, mouths forming pleading words.

 

At fifteen, he watches his parents fall, limbs limp and eyes empty, into a pool of red.

 

_They_ accept him, and he doesn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

At seventeen, he’s sitting in a diner crowded with guns and bodies.

 

They fall, one by one, clutching wounds and crying in agony. He watches their eyes glaze over as they still. The last of them lays sprawled at his feet, blue eyes wide and mouth gaping with a trail of blood and spit dribbling onto cool white tiles, hand frozen where it had grasped blindly for his boot.

 

Bullets ring off the chipping walls.

 

The gift has lost its weight, sitting in the palm of his hand as he shakily eases his own round into the chamber. He lifts it, barrel cold where it digs into the underside of his jaw.

 

Red drips into his vision. His hand shakes.

 

The blistering pain in his shoulder is unbearable. Over the rush of blood in his ears, he can hear the pounding. Footsteps.

 

He closes his eyes.

 

Bang.

 

At seventeen, the _heroes_ find him dying, two holes in his chest, one too close to his heart. They drag him from the building, patch him back up, and offer him a choice.

 

At seventeen, he sells his soul.

 

* * *

 

At thirty, he sits in a bar with men he once saw as _heroes_. They talk around him of victories and battles. All he hears are lies, the very ones they try desperately to believe.

 

_His_ commander slides into the bar beside him and offers him a cigarette that they share, no words exchanged. They lean back while their _comrades_ lean forward to lap up every word of their loudest companion, separate and a part.

 

The smoke is passed back, and he feels the heaviness of the day settle in the pit of his stomach.

 

_We won_ , they say amongst themselves. _We saved the day_.

 

He opens his mouth, and before he even speaks he regrets it.

 

A fight picks up, their leaders bickering, his commander versus theirs.

 

It’s the same as always, the _us_ versus _them_ that makes him reach for the gift he keeps at his side. The gift from when he was a naïve child unaware of how the world worked.

 

He stands, and the attention turns to him.

 

He smiles, the emptiness in his eyes making a few at the table visibly uneasy.

 

_He’s lost it,_ they whisper. _He’s gone mad._

 

He raises the gift, and feels their breath catch in their throat.

 

“I’m leaving,” he says calmly.

 

Betrayal flickers through them and it makes his lips stretch into a smile. He turns, feels his commander’s gun pointed at his back, and keeps walking.

 

His name is called, loud and sharp and damning.

 

_If you leave, you deserve to die._

 

He keeps walking, the door clicking shut behind him.

  
At thirty, he finally escapes.


	2. A Giftless Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Later in the semester we were asked to rewrite a previous piece. I chose this one.  
> Many thanks again go to kenwave for beta reading.

They had been there for a year, when a boy comes to them, face purple with bruises. His bottom lips busted and his eye’s swollen, but he’s full of fire.

He’s barely fourteen, slim as a rod and utterly useless.

As he begs and pleads for their help, they exchange glances, all thinking the same thing. He’s pathetic – is that a broken rib? - and won’t last the year.

He won’t take no for an answer, but he’ll take a gun and they don’t see the harm so they oblige. He takes it with a misguided sense of hope. He says he’ll prove himself.

They don’t believe him.

At fifteen years old the boy comes back to them. They have to really think to even remember who he is. He tells them he’s done it; his parents are dead, he shot them himself.

They take him in as one of the gang.

Maybe one day, he’ll prove to be useful.

* * *

The organization is only six years old when they run the operation to take down the gang. It’s almost too easy, with the criminals disorganized and unprepared.

She waits with her gun raised, the scope to her eye. It’s heavy in her hands as she takes the lives of man after man, watching through the glass as they fall, faces frozen in anguish and pain.

The number of men trapped in the crumbling, dingy diner dwindles, and Jack gives the order for their squadron to move in. She holds her breath, watching them pass down the hall.

There’s chatter over the communicators; they claim one still lives, so she searches through her scope for the boy they say is inside.

She moves positions just in time to watch her friends round a corner to find a teen with a revolver wedged beneath his jaw.

He survives, because someone pulled the trigger before he could.

The boy is seventeen years old, they find out later, from a town they failed to protect.

They patch him back up and she watches on, disapproving, as they make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Six years in, and they’re giving seventeen year olds guns and orders to use them; and they call themselves heroes.

She almost laughs.

* * *

He’s been the Blackwatch commander for nineteen years when it all goes to shit. He’s destroyed his name, killed more innocents than he could count, and watched that kid they pulled out of the gutters come loose at the hinges.

He watches the boy, now thirty years old, sit with his broad back facing the rest of the team with his hat tipped low over his eyes so it casts dark shadows that conceal his expression. He slides in beside him, offers a cigarette from the pack he keeps in his hip pocket for times like this.

They don’t talk; instead, they listen to the stories being weaved by their loudest companion, tales of how cities were falling and how they, the heroes in every story, came to save the day.

He hears Jack laugh and grinds his teeth, eyes flicking to the kid beside him who’s scowling now. He knows the kid’s clever, clever enough to see through the lies. He’s almost proud.

When the boy speaks his mind, it sets Jack on edge enough to scold him, and of course it falls to Gabriel as commander to speak up and defend the kid.

In their arguing, they almost don’t notice when the kid stands. They’re only brought to notice when the others around them still.

There are whispered words of concern, of worry for the kid when finally, the gun that usually sits in a fancy holster at his hip is raised.

“I’m leaving,” says that thirty year old kid, voice cold and eyes empty. He’s smiling, but it’s forced and fraying at the edges.

It stings; he scowls.      

_Haven’t we done enough for you? Wasn’t saving you from them enough?_

The kid just smiles wider. When he turns, Gabriel stands, his shotgun raised, aimed at the back of the man that used to be his proudest achievement. A street rat shaped into something better.

“ _Jesse!”_ he shouts, the name burning his tongue.

_If you leave, you deserve to die_.

The kid keeps walking, leaving their world behind.

At thirty years old, that kid still has a knack for destroying.


End file.
